Spike and the Methods of Rationality
by HeirOfVoid
Summary: Spike finds a new book in Twilight's castle, one that will turn his life upside-down.
1. Prologue: Yay Procrastination!

Spike and Twilight were scampering around the latter's bedroom, packing for yet another adventure. The Map had spoken, so to speak, and Twilight had been called away to some distant part of Equestria on the northwest coast. However, The Map had only called Twilight, and none of her friends, so she was in full freak-out mode trying to prepare for every possible contingency. " First aid for chipmunks? That'll be useful," Twilight said distractedly while piling a variety of supplies into a pair of already bulging saddlebags. The added weight cause them to sag into the bright blue blanket on her new bed, wrinkling the otherwise flawless fabric. "Oh, and before I forget," Twilight continued, "Spike, while I'm gone could you draw a map of this place? I got lost on my way to the bathroom again."

Spike sighed internally at the prospect of such a daunting task since he was too busy grunting under the weight of a stack of books to do it externally. Ever since Twilight had gotten her castle and discovered the Map, it seemed she'd been growing more and more distant. Sure, she was still Spike's big sister/foster mom, but she was always rushing from one important task to another, even when Equestria _wasn't_ in peril, which was infrequent. Setting the books down on the windowsill next to the intended shelf, he started sorting through them and replied, "Sure thing Twilight. Do you want the basic, intermediate, or extreme layout?"

"I'd prefer extreme," Twilight answered while she stuck her muzzle into the saddlebags, which muffled her voice slightly, "But do whatever you have the time for. You're a busy dragon, after all." Spike sighed again, this time for real but still too quiet for Twilight to hear. Frankly, he should have expected that.

When Twilight's horn lit up again and even more random junk started filing into the room, Spike decided he had to intervene before things got out of hoof. "TWILIGHT!" he shouted, causing her to lose her concentration and send miscellaneous objects flying everywhere, "I think you've got enough stuff," he continued in a more reasonable tone, "Stop worrying about the mission. You're the Princess of Friendship, and you've been dealing with things like this long before you earned that title. You'll be fine." He walked over and hugged her for emphasis. "I know you will."

Twilight teared up at that point and hugged him back, hard. "Thanks, Spike," she said softly, " I needed that."

"That's what I'm here for," Spike said amiably, "Now go and kick some tail, Sis."

"I will," she said, this time with more confidence. Then she glanced at the clock and almost flipped out again, "The train's almost here, I've got to go. Love you!" She kissed Spike on the top of his spines, grabbed the saddlebags, swept up the debris with her magic and raced out the door before Spike's "Love you too," reached her ears. He exhaled sharply, then went back to sorting the books. _Making that map can wait until later,_ he thought absently, _It's not like Twilight will need to use it right away. Besides, I have to get this done before my date with_ Rarity. Well, technically he was helping her gem hunt again this afternoon, but to the young drake it might as well have been.

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Spike trudged back into the castle around 5 P.M., feeling tired but satisfied. With his help, Rarity had brought home an especially large gem haul, and while he hadn't gotten a kiss on the cheek for his troubles, seeing her so happy and the hug she'd given him as thanks were good enough. He stretched, got himself some dinner in the form of a couple of rubies and an emerald (always a nice combination in his book), then decided to get started on that map for Twilight. First step: find every room in the castle.

This proved to be much more complicated than it first appeared, especially once, on an impulse that had helped him find hidden compartments in the past, he knocked twice on the wall between the primary staircases and revealed an entire additional set of stairs leading straight down. He stepped inside cautiously and made his way down, taking note of the lack of gold detailing and sparse lighting compared to the rest of the building. Upon reaching the bottom, he found the hallway split in two, each leading off into the distance to his left and right with cell doors speckled along the walls. He gulped, realizing this must the castle dungeon, then realized how cool it was to live in a castle with a dungeon, then remembered that he shouldn't care one way or the other since Canterlot had one too.

He was halfway through playing Eenie-Meanie to decide which way to go when he felt another impulse, this one pointing straight ahead at the supposedly blank wall in front of him. Upon closer inspection, however, he found a square crack in the mortar, and lightly pressed it with one claw. With a crack and a groan, one of the blocks above and to the right him fell out of the wall and landed a scant half an inch away from his foot. Looking down at the stone in question, he held up two claws just a touch apart and quipped, "Missed it by _that_ much." Once he'd recovered from nearly getting his foot flattened (which didn't take any time at all), he hopped up on top of the block and peaked into the small pocket behind the stone. A glint caught his eye, and with a bit of stretching, he managed to reach in and drag what turned out to be a book into easy reach.

Curious, Spike picked the book up and inspected it. Unlike every other book he'd seen, this one didn't have a hard cover. Instead, its cover was made of a much thicker than usual piece of paper coated with some shiny material he didn't recognize, and painted an unassuming bluish grey. For something that could have been there for centuries, it was in surprisingly good condition, practically brand new to Spike's expert eye. The title read, in bold black letters, "The Methods of Rationality, by Eye the Ewe." Spike blinked in surprise at the name since he'd never heard it before, even in passing despite being a library curator's assistant. He made a mental note to check the index cards for possible matches once he got back upstairs and cracked the book open. It didn't seem to be magical, either good or bad, so he was hoping reading it wouldn't do anything nasty.

Flipping to the contents, he noted that the book had a preface, and that somepony must have read it before him since the phrase "The Twelve Virtues of Rationality" was underlined in pen. The line extended past the edge of the words and led to the sloppily scrawled phrase, "Read this first," suggesting that same somepony had been in a hurry when they'd written the note. Spike shrugged, and theorized that since nothing had jumped him when he'd opened it that the book must be safe. With personal safety taken care of, at least in his opinion, he headed back upstairs to his room, since he preferred reading curled up in his bed and it was pretty dark down here anyway.

He read through the rest of the table along the way, growing more incredulous with every step. This book was either the most overblown piece of dung ever written or a treasure trove of incredibly useful information. Why no one understands you? Bias and how to overcome it? The nature of truth itself? That was only in the first few chapters, and the stuff he could make sense of without reading the words themselves (What in Equestria was a planning fallacy, anyway?). He considered just leaving the book on the library table until Twilight got back and letting her take a look at it, but given how she tended to react to new information, if this book was the real deal it just might make her brain explode. Or make her go crazy, which was definitely worse. No, he had to read this thing, or at least enough of it to be able to tell Twilight whether to proceed with caution. Drawing that map could wait until later.


	2. 1 The Twelve Virtues

Spike sprawled back onto his bed with a contented sigh, holding The Methods of Rationality in one claw and his Rarity plush close to his chest with the other. With a lazy yawn he opened the book and flipped to the correct page. He figured if somepony had gone to all the trouble of highlighting a particular passage he might as well start there first, as he didn't exactly have anything telling him otherwise. He wriggled around until he got comfortable, then began to read as he scratched the plush behind the ears.

 **The Twelve Virtues of Rationality**

 **1\. Curiosity: A burning desire to learn that will not accept any substitute for the truth. If you do not wish to know, nothing can teach you.**

 **2\. Relinquishment: The ability to discard your beliefs if they prove to be unfounded. P. C. Hodgell said: "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." If the flower is red, you wish to believe it is red. If it is blue, you wish to believe it is blue.**

 **3\. Lightness: Change your beliefs to match your surroundings. Do not try to twist your surroundings to justify your beliefs. You are not your opinions, and in order to grow you must be able to leave lesser opinions behind.**

 **4\. Evenness: Treat all evidence and all ideas as equal. You are the judge, not the prosecution, and must not stack the odds in favor of the conclusion you prefer. To fail in this, do as follows: if you want to believe, ask, "Does the evidence permit me to believe?" If you want to disbelieve, ask, "Does the evidence force me to believe?" If you knew the answer you would not still be pondering the question.**

 **5\. Argument: Arguing is the heart of understanding because it pits your idea against an opposing idea. When two ideas fight in this manner the weaker is destroyed, and both sides adopt the stronger. It is natural selection as applied to thoughts.**

 **6\. Empiricism: The theory that all knowledge is derived from experience. The foundation of understanding is built on the observation of an event, and its capstone is predicting how that event will shape its surroundings. Do not ask what you believe, ask what you have experienced. Always know what difference in understanding you are arguing about, and do not let the argument stray from the original topic. Jerry Cleaver said: "What does you in is not failure to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique. It's overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball."**

 **7\. Simplicity: The best ideas are often the easiest to understand. The more complicated an idea is, the more likely it is to have a flaw. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said: "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." A single mistake in a complex math equation can lead you far from the true answer, and unless you found that mistake you would never know. In other words, Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS).**

 **8\. Humility: The ability to predict your own failures and shortcomings so you are able to work around them. To say you make mistakes and then not do anything to prevent those mistakes is not humility: it is boasting about being humble, which is self-defeating. It is useless to be the best because then you stop trying to improve. You are never right, only less wrong than you were before.**

 **9\. Perfectionism: Trying to never make a mistake, ever, and fixing all mistakes you find. When you correct an error within yourself it allows you to spot another. Every time you do this you improve, making fewer mistakes and allowing you to see even more errors to correct. It is a constant war of self-improvement. Perfection can be pursued, but never obtained. If you think you are perfect, you are wrong.**

 **10\. Precision: Two people are given a color. One says it is between yellow and purple, the other says it is between green and blue, if the answer is teal, both are correct, but the latter was a riskier and ultimately more useful prediction because it had a higher chance of being wrong. Rationalism is a precise art, and vague statements do not help you reach the best possible conclusion.**

 **11\. Scholarship: Study everything. Learn all you can about any science, be it mechanical, chemical, or biological. As your understanding grows the lines between these fields will blur and disappear, and your knowledge will come together as a jigsaw puzzle the size of the universe. Assembling the puzzle that is reality is the purpose of Rationalism, and without that purpose it folds in on itself and becomes useless.**

 **12\. The twelfth and most important virtue has no true name. Miyamoto Musashi wrote, in The Book of Five Rings: "The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him." Rationalism is all about intent: the intent to discover the truth and the refusal to be denied. It is a means to an end, not a goal in and of itself. It is not a religion. It is not an ideal. It is the hammer that you use to strike the iron of understanding against the anvil of reality, every blow shaping your knowledge to more closely fit that mold. If you treat being rational as a goal you are putting it on a pedestal and it will no longer work as it should. It is a tool in your arsenal: it may be the most powerful tool but it is still a tool.**

 **Curiosity, Relinquishment, Lightness, Evenness, Argument, Empiricism, Simplicity, Humility, Perfectionism, Precision, Scholarship, and intent. The basis of Rational thought.**

When Spike had reached the end of the list he sat there for a moment, completely silent. His Rariy plush slipped from his grasp and fell on the floor, its former carrier hanging limp. Then three words escaped his lips, one of which would have earned him a tongue lashing from Twilight and Rarity alike if either had been present. "What. The. Buck." If the sun had spontaneously exploded in that moment, it's glory would not have matched the awe that Spike had just been floored with. He'd never heard of any of these ponies, and that code, despite being equally unfamiliar, resonated with him to a disturbing degree, rather like it was part of the dragon code he had once created, but he forgot to put it in at the time.

He didn't even know where to start. Curiosity? He'd felt that desire for knowledge before, but the idea of it being the basis for an entire system of thought was mind boggling. Argument as a good thing? That went against almost everything he'd ever learned. Arguments were to be avoided, not sought out. Scholarship was just like Twilight, only even more intense, if such a thing was possible. And that last Virtue... It sounded an awful like how Twilight had always explained magic to him: You conceive how you want the world to change, and then use your magic to make it so. Only instead of changing the world, you were changing yourself. And Spike definitely felt like he had changed. He had no idea how, but he knew that he had.

In any case, any doubt about the quality of the book had packed up, left in the middle of the night and taken the kids with it. This was the real deal, and he wasn't sure he was ready for it. With that thought dominating his mind he carefully stood up, walked to the far side of the room, placed the book on the window sill, stacked another, much larger book on top of it so it wouldn't try anything during the night, and got ready for bed. He needed to sleep on this, or at least think about what he'd read while trying to fall asleep. He had a sneaking suspicion it would be door number two.

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Spike slept fitfully, and woke up the next tired and much earlier than usual. A quick raid on Twilight's emergency coffee stash (helpfully labeled NOT FOR SPIKE in big red letters) fixed the first problem, and Spike took advantage of the second by going up to the roof to watch the sunrise. He'd been going back and forth on whether to keep reading the book all night, and still hadn't come to a decision. On the one hoof, it wasn't dragon dung. It made sense, in a bizarre sort of way, and he honestly couldn't think of any examples of the book being flat out wrong. Even the paragraph about arguing had solid reasoning behind it. On the other, it was just as clearly dangerous. The thoughts contained between its pages were alien, like nothing else he'd ever encountered. For all he knew if he kept reading it would eventually drive him insane, forcing Twilight to take care of him for the rest of his days.

While Spike mused on his issues, the sun peaked over the horizon between the cliffs, then rose in a fiery arc that suggested Celestia felt like showing off this morning. Spike appluaded politely, although he was pretty sure she couldn't see him from here, then stood, stretched, and headed back downstairs. As he passed his room, he stopped in the doorway, his gaze flicking between the rest of castle and the book under the book on the windowsill. It scared him, that book, but at the same time he couldn't resist taking a step towards it, then another and another until he was holding it in his arms again and flipping through the pages, tracking down the first chapter. As he walked towards his bed his foot struck the Rarirty plush that was his secret pride and joy, his carelessness sending it careening against the wall.

As the first warm rays of light had bounced off his scales, they woke a fire inside him. Not a literal fire, that had been burning ever since he hatched, but a mental one. He wanted to know what the book contained, what other craziness and world-shattering revelations were hidden within the ink and paper. Curiosity had gripped Spike's heart, and as he found the page he was looking for, titled "What and Why Rationality?" he failed to notice that he had grown an eighth of an inch since the night before.

 ** _I've improved the story and reworked the last two paragraphs of the previous chapter, so if this seems familiar that's why._**


End file.
